April 2010

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Indigenous knowledge recovery is an anti-colonial project. It is a project that gains its momentum from the anguish of loss of what was and the determined hope for what will be. It springs from the disaster resulting from the centuries of colonialism’s efforts to methodically eradicate our ways of seeing, being and interacting with the world. At the dawn of the 21st century, the...

This blog post is part of the Federation Equity Portfolio’s ‘Equality Then and Now’ series, marking 40 years since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Look for more on this topic in upcoming posts and at Congress 2010.

“Women’s committees, it was argued, cannot effectively address intersectionality.” This was one of the main reasons given for dismantling the ...

This blog post is part of the Federation Equity Portfolio’s ‘Equality Then and Now’ series, marking 40 years since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Look for more on this topic in upcoming posts and at Congress 2010.

This is an edited version of Dr. Deaville’s recent presentation to the Federation’s General Assembly meeting on March 27, 2010. Listen to the podcast of the panel presentation, or read the liveblog of the event.

My own academic mentoring consisted of a troubling personal relationship under a senior professor, who introduced me to post-...

Last month, a study conducted by Statistics Canada for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Canadian Heritage and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada entitled Projections of the Diversity of the Canadian Population, 2006 -2031, provided a look into the future of Canadian society: One in every three people will be from a racialized group, up to about 14.4 million people....

The following narratives describe the ways in which female graduate students see mentoring as essential to their academic success. As one woman stated, “Having a responsive and engaged advisor has been critical to completing my degree.” Another woman stated, “My mentors know my strengths and more importantly, my weaknesses. Thus they are able to provide useful feedback on how I can improve.” And finally as one other woman succinctly stated, “Mentoring is key! It is the business of who you know and how connected you are.”

Engaged scholarship, Knowledge mobilization, Social innovation - all of these terms have been gained prominence in the past few years as ways to describe how researchers and scholars can connect with communities. Regardless of your preferred term, it is clear that strong relationships between researchers and communities have been developing, leading to many creative and constructive results.

On March 28, 2010, the Annual Meeting of the Federation's General Assembly featured an intriguing and thoughtful session on Engaged Scholarship, moderated by Karen Grant, VP Research Policy. Listen to the full podcast of the session below, or read the live blog account of the event here. Excuse the initial part of the recording - the session gets underway at 2:34 into the recording.

“Who are we in the university…? What do we represent? Whom do we represent? Are we responsible? For what and to whom? If there is a university responsibility, it at least begins with the moment when a need to hear these questions, to take them upon oneself and respond, is imposed. This imperative of the response is the initial form and minimal requirement of responsibility,”...

Universities are one of the most important sites of knowledge production. Open and inclusive dialogue contributes generously to the knowledge commons. It allows all of us to take advantage of new insights and perspectives. The need for such a site for knowledge production is more important today than ever as the processes of globalization accelerate, the world shrinks and people of varied backgrounds comingle with each other. Becoming aware of multiple...

Multiculturalism has been a cornerstone of Canadian policy for almost 40 years, but internationally, particularly since 9/11 and in light of inter-ethnic conflicts in Europe resulting from immigration, there has been something of a ‘retreat’ from multiculturalism. Should Canada keep multiculturalism despite problems elsewhere? Or should our multiculturalism policies be changed, or perhaps even abandoned?